Support NeoGAF

[Sinfulgore]

Not true at all. Companies hire consultants for many reasons. Mostly to get information about a topic they dont know about. Theres nothing wrong with it. Its up to the company how they use the information. Example ill hire a consultant that is an expert in Mid evil fighting techniques to help the team develop a combat moveset for a character in that time period. Im doing game about encountering a militia in the congo, im hiring a consulant that knows about this because im not going to the jungle to get reference for that. When you don't do the research thats when you get generic weak characters. Consultants are import, everybody in the creative field uses them.

What exactly isn't true? You didn't address any of the points I made.

You don't need to hire a consultant to do research and there's a big difference between say IW hiring a Gun consultant to make sure the gun sounds in Call of Duty are accurate vs. Remedy hiring a consultant on Alan Wake 2 so it doesn't offend people on Twitter.

What leads to generic weak characters is bad creatives and woke ideology. In the past creatives just created what they wanted. You couldn't even make a character like Black Panther in 2024. Could you imagine the backlash if two white guys tried to make an African SuperHero? What makes characters weak and generic are creatives who are so afraid of offending people on Twitter or being labeled racist or sexist. This is something creatives in the past never had to worry about.

 

[Moriarty1889]

What exactly isn't true? You didn't address any of the points I made.

You don't need to hire a consultant to do research and there's a big difference between say IW hiring a Gun consultant to make sure the gun sounds in Call of Duty are accurate vs. Remedy hiring a consultant on Alan Wake 2 so it doesn't offend people on Twitter.

What leads to generic weak characters is bad creatives and woke ideology. In the past creatives just created what they wanted. You couldn't even make a character like Black Panther in 2024. Could you imagine the backlash if two white guys tried to make an African SuperHero? What makes characters weak and generic are creatives who are so afraid of offending people on Twitter or being labeled racist or sexist. This is something creatives in the past never had to worry about.

Very true and solid points. Social media in general has made it way to easy for people to run rampant and attack or vilify anything or anyone they dont agree with. People are more worried about being slandered or labeled something they are not. That keeps many from being open about things or as you said having true creative freedom to express their own ideas. In many ways certain forms of social media has lead to the utter decay of society.

 

[semiconscious]

What leads to generic weak characters is bad creatives and woke ideology. In the past creatives just created what they wanted. You couldn't even make a character like Black Panther in 2024. Could you imagine the backlash if two white guys tried to make an African SuperHero? What makes characters weak and generic are creatives who are so afraid of offending people on Twitter or being labeled racist or sexist. This is something creatives in the past never had to worry about.

not just white guys - 2 jews, dude! excelsior!...

if a writer just happens to be an ideologue? well, there you go, you're free to either ignore or enjoy whatever it is they're up to. thus has it always been. when you actually have to turn to bringing in 'professional ideologues' (seriously?) to make sure all your attempts at being ideologically correct have all the i's & t's dotted & crossed? it looks more like you, as the creator, are not really all that comfortable with this particular ideology, which you're claiming to be advancing as your own, indicating that maybe it's not actually all that genuinely deeply, personally felt after all?...

 

[CGNoire]

Did you just make this up? Spiderman 1 sold 3.3 million in 3 days. Spiderman 2 sold 2.5 million in 1 day. And 5 million in 10 days. And it's used as a counterargument when people say stupid things like "Go woke, Go Broke". And then called Spiderman 2 woke, but then won't acknowledge why it didn't go broke.




The bolded may be the best point in this thread. Ultimately this is where Insomniac "COULD" be going wrong. Stop trying to not offend. You're fine! You'll be fine! Stop caring about what Twitter says. Talk to real consultants to get things right, but do it for the sense of accuracy and not fear of backlash.



I don't think you understand. That's the law at work. The law was created to do the bolded. That's the point! The point is to create craziness and to get books banned by trying to avoid lawsuits. It's the new tactic that politicians are using now.

That sounds like BS. The point isnt to ban 600+ books the point is to control what material is appropriate for children. Now if this review the schools say there going to conduct never returns any of these books back to there shelves and they are permenantly held in limbo just to avoid a lawsuit then you would have a point. Right now you have zero proof this is whats happening and are just extrapulating via your bias. It should be alarming to you that just finding out what objectionable material or passages are the issue seems to be purposely omitted from all major news feeds. They only seem interested in headlines that alarm and zero interest in actualy informing.

 

[twilo99]

 

[Stooky]

What exactly isn't true? You didn't address any of the points I made.

You don't need to hire a consultant to do research and there's a big difference between say IW hiring a Gun consultant to make sure the gun sounds in Call of Duty are accurate vs. Remedy hiring a consultant on Alan Wake 2 so it doesn't offend people on Twitter.

What leads to generic weak characters is bad creatives and woke ideology. In the past creatives just created what they wanted. You couldn't even make a character like Black Panther in 2024. Could you imagine the backlash if two white guys tried to make an African SuperHero? What makes characters weak and generic are creatives who are so afraid of offending people on Twitter or being labeled racist or sexist. This is something creatives in the past never had to worry about.

your anti-woke crusade clouds your judgement. nothing you are saying based on any logic or knowledge of entertainment production at all. for me i don’t a fuck it’s about the results it’s either good or bad that’s all that matters. you can have expert gun consultant or an expert or expert on inclusion , culture etc AGAIN it’s how the project decides to use this information. there are what you would call ‘woke’ consultants hired on projects you love that turned out amazing. On black panther you don’t think disney marvel they hired crew of consultants to make sure the all the different african cultures paid the proper and did not offend. this happens on EVERY production. that movie could absolutely be made today.

 

[VanCityGamer]

As for all the diversity stuff being jammed into everything the past 10 years, you can tell right off the bat the diversity being pushed is also discriminatory too.

I dont know what it's like in other countries, but in Canada/US the diversity push seems similar, which is often to pushed to gaming too --> the diversity push is skewed heavy to Black people.

Where's all the Latinos, Native and East Indians, and Asians when it comes to diverse media or character sets in gaming? Just a reminder for demographics, USA is 13% Black and Canada is 4% Black.

Exactly. I’ve been saying this for a while now too. The irony is Black people are actually over represented in media now - video games, TV shows, films. It’s Latinos, Asians, Natives, etc. who should be upset. But they’re not the minority making all the noise (which to be fair based on history, of course I get why Black people would be more aggressive about representation).

 

[mckmas8808]

All the recent flop marvel and disney movies, the x play revival, easy allies are all great examples of get woke go broke. You can't point to Spiderman, an ip that still has a reputation and say people want this shit. They are pulling bait and switch. People trust the ip, and they betray that trust. Barbie succeeded due to a meme.

You just picked things that flopped and made it woke LOL! Trust the IP? HAHAHAHA!!!! If "go woke, go broke" is real, the IP wouldn't matter. Think about it.

 

[mckmas8808]

That sounds like BS. The point isnt to ban 600+ books the point is to control what material is appropriate for children. Now if this review the schools say there going to conduct never returns any of these books back to there shelves and they are permenantly held in limbo just to avoid a lawsuit then you would have a point. Right now you have zero proof this is whats happening and are just extrapulating via your bias. It should be alarming to you that just finding out what objectionable material or passages are the issue seems to be purposely omitted from all major news feeds. They only seem interested in headlines that alarm and zero interest in actualy informing.

Which is BS!!! The books should have never been pulled in the first place. Yall act like nobody has read these books before. As if they are one-offs, that only 12 people have read in history. Some of these books have been read in those same class rooms for over 20 years!

The content in them isn't up for debate. We know what's in them! And they know what's in them. The point is to pull them off the shelves and ban them from being read. It's a level of censorship America has NEVER seen in its history! And it's happening in class rooms. Not video games. It happening in games, I understand why some are pissed. But the schools? That's extra nuts. But half the people in America love these book bans because they bias against the content, the authors, or someone on some news channel or FB post told them it's dangerous 4 teh kidz.

 

[CGNoire]

The content in them isn't up for debate. We know what's in them! And they know what's in them.

Like I said BS. 'We know whats in them" ...No you dont. I would bet money that not only have you not read more than a small handfull of these but that theres zero chance that you even recognize the vast majority of titles listed. The constant appeals to authority you keep making only serve to mask the fact that you have no arguement. Like i said before come back at me later if there still held in limbo and at a point when its become clear that they wont be returned permenantly and Ill eat crow then. Otherwise its just your conjecture at this point.

 

[Sinfulgore]

your anti-woke crusade clouds your judgement. nothing you are saying based on any logic or knowledge of entertainment production at all. for me i don’t a fuck it’s about the results it’s either good or bad that’s all that matters. you can have expert gun consultant or an expert or expert on inclusion , culture etc AGAIN it’s how the project decides to use this information. there are what you would call ‘woke’ consultants hired on projects you love that turned out amazing. On black panther you don’t think disney marvel they hired crew of consultants to make sure the all the different african cultures paid the proper and did not offend. this happens on EVERY production. that movie could absolutely be made today.

Anti-woke crusade? lol what? I doubt it, the games I love are old and came out long before this diversity and inclusion push existed. I'm not talking about the Black Panther movie, I'm talking about the character who came out in the 60s. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby didn't need to hire consultants to come up with T'Challa or Wakanda. One thing older creators understood was that these characters are fictional and fictional characters don't need to reflect reality. I'm sure Disney paid consultants to make sure the Black Panther movie didn't offend people on Twitter and the fact they had to do that but the original creators of the characters and the world didn't illustrates the problem.

 

[MonkeyClaw36]

I watched like 6 min of it and turned it off.

There's one hilarious part where they very bluntly and proudly state they arent making this for white people. I just had to face palm on that one.

So they are making a comment about 1 ethnic group. That's not very inclusive is it?

They should have said: We are not making this for 1 specific group.

They just gone and shot themselves in the foot with this..

 

[Sinfulgore]

You just picked things that flopped and made it woke LOL! Trust the IP? HAHAHAHA!!!! If "go woke, go broke" is real, the IP wouldn't matter. Think about it.

This is not true. Of course, the IP will matter, most people don't care about woke stuff and will see the latest Star Wars or Disney animated movie or play the latest Spiderman game no matter what at first but that goodwill won't last forever. What "go woke, go broke" really means is that when you incorporate wokeness into your company it will destroy your brands. It doesn't happen right away but over time it will. Look at Star Wars. At its core wokeness is literally just appealing to a very tiny yet vocal minority of people who spend too much time on social media, the more you try to appeal to this tiny group the smaller your audience will be because the harder you push woke stuff to please this group the more people you will turn away. This is how you go from The Force Awakens(~$2billlion box office) to The Rise of Skywaker($1Billion box office), and to present day which is almost 5 years out since Rise of Skywalker released, and yet Lucasfilm can't even get another Star Wars movie off the ground.

I think most gamers, myself included, just don't want to see the gaming industry suffer the same fate that destroyed comic books and is currently destroying Hollywood. You can claim that "woke" projects in gaming sell fine so who cares but we all know a couple of projects doing well doesn't mean everything is fine. The more woke stuff is pushed the worse the content will get and as the content gets worse or at the very least uninteresting that's how you lose the causals. And once you lose them you get stuff like The Marvels or Wish that couldn't even make $100 million domestically. What an embarrassment, Walt would be so disappointed if he could see what his company had become. We have already seen stuff like this happening in the gaming industry with studios like Volition.

 

[JayK47]

I'd like to know all games that were made while consulting with Sweet Baby Inc, so I can avoid them. So far I am aware of Spiderman 2, God of War Ragnarok, and Alan Wake 2.

 

[mckmas8808]

This is not true. Of course, the IP will matter, most people don't care about woke stuff and will see the latest Star Wars or Disney animated movie or play the latest Spiderman game no matter what at first but that goodwill won't last forever. What "go woke, go broke" really means is that when you incorporate wokeness into your company it will destroy your brands. It doesn't happen right away but over time it will. Look at Star Wars. At its core wokeness is literally just appealing to a very tiny yet vocal minority of people who spend too much time on social media, the more you try to appeal to this tiny group the smaller your audience will be because the harder you push woke stuff to please this group the more people you will turn away. This is how you go from The Force Awakens(~$2billlion box office) to The Rise of Skywaker($1Billion box office), and to present day which is almost 5 years out since Rise of Skywalker released, and yet Lucasfilm can't even get another Star Wars movie off the ground.

I think most gamers, myself included, just don't want to see the gaming industry suffer the same fate that destroyed comic books and is currently destroying Hollywood. You can claim that "woke" projects in gaming sell fine so who cares but we all know a couple of projects doing well doesn't mean everything is fine. The more woke stuff is pushed the worse the content will get and as the content gets worse or at the very least uninteresting that's how you lose the causals. And once you lose them you get stuff like The Marvels or Wish that couldn't even make $100 million domestically. What an embarrassment, Walt would be so disappointed if he could see what his company had become. We have already seen stuff like this happening in the gaming industry with studios like Volition.

Cherry picking man. Go woke, go broke is a lie. The Star Wars brand fell off because the scripts for Episode 8 and 9 weren't good. Plain and simple. It didn't carry a cohesive story. And the Wish movie got a 48% on Rotten Tomatoes! That's why it didn't perform well.

And how is the movie Wish woke, exactly?

 

[NickFire]

Cherry picking man. Go woke, go broke is a lie. The Star Wars brand fell off because the scripts for Episode 8 and 9 weren't good. Plain and simple. It didn't carry a cohesive story. And the Wish movie got a 48% on Rotten Tomatoes! That's why it didn't perform well.

Old friend, I think you're missing the forest through the trees on your Star Wars opinion. Maybe ask yourself why they didn't have a cohesive story.

 

[mckmas8808]

Old friend, I think you're missing the forest through the trees on your Star Wars opinion. Maybe ask yourself why they didn't have a cohesive story.

I blame.......

She's a disgrace. And I feel like the issue with the direction of Star Wars in Ep 8 and 9 was also the fault of Rian "I don't care about Star Wars" Johnson. Dude wanted to create his own vision, even though Ep. 7 existed. Does Kathleen go too hard for her obsession with women in Star Wars? Yes. But Andor, Bad Batch, and Ashoka TV shows have shown me that once she gets out of the way......Star Wars can still be good.

 

[Sinfulgore]

Cherry picking man. Go woke, go broke is a lie. The Star Wars brand fell off because the scripts for Episode 8 and 9 weren't good. Plain and simple. It didn't carry a cohesive story. And the Wish movie got a 48% on Rotten Tomatoes! That's why it didn't perform well.

And how is the movie Wish woke, exactly?

Using examples to prove my point is cherry-picking? You are proving my overall point here, the reason why the content is bad is because of wokeness.

Wokeness prioritizes checking boxes and pushing a message over everything else. Star Wars doesn't have a cohesive story because the story doesn't matter to Kathleen Kennedy. As long as it pushes the message she wants pushed it doesn't matter who the villain is or what the rest of the characters do. She doesn't even care if it's successful or not because all that matters is that her message gets pushed out. Activists like Kathleen Kennedy know their ideas aren't popular or interesting so they have to force them into popular IPs just to get them out to the general audience. Wokeness also causes companies to hire inexperienced people because they care more about what boxes you check than the quality of your work. This is why an inexperienced director like Nia Dacosta who has only directed two other movies before The Marvels got a job directing the sequel to a billion-dollar movie. What do you think happens when you have inexperienced people and people who don't understand their audience making content? How can you not see that it's wokeness that is causing so much of modern-day content to be bad?

As for Wish, I will put it in the hiring inexperienced people column of wokeness. The screenplay and story were done by Allison Moore, someone like Nia Dacosta with very few credits on IMBD. Wish was supposed to be commemorating Disney's 100-year anniversary, Disney should have gotten top talent to work on a project that significant but when it comes to wokeness the quality of your work is irrelevant.

 

[hyperbertha]

You just picked things that flopped and made it woke LOL! Trust the IP? HAHAHAHA!!!! If "go woke, go broke" is real, the IP wouldn't matter. Think about it.

pure denial LOL. You know those things are woke. Tell me the xplay rant that drove it into the ground wasn't woke. I dare you. And the trusting comes before the ip goes woke LMAO

 

[mckmas8808]

Using examples to prove my point is cherry-picking? You are proving my overall point here, the reason why the content is bad is because of wokeness.

Wokeness prioritizes checking boxes and pushing a message over everything else. Star Wars doesn't have a cohesive story because the story doesn't matter to Kathleen Kennedy. As long as it pushes the message she wants pushed it doesn't matter who the villain is or what the rest of the characters do. She doesn't even care if it's successful or not because all that matters is that her message gets pushed out. Activists like Kathleen Kennedy know their ideas aren't popular or interesting so they have to force them into popular IPs just to get them out to the general audience. Wokeness also causes companies to hire inexperienced people because they care more about what boxes you check than the quality of your work. This is why an inexperienced director like Nia Dacosta who has only directed two other movies before The Marvels got a job directing the sequel to a billion-dollar movie. What do you think happens when you have inexperienced people and people who don't understand their audience making content? How can you not see that it's wokeness that is causing so much of modern-day content to be bad?

As for Wish, I will put it in the hiring inexperienced people column of wokeness. The screenplay and story were done by Allison Moore, someone like Nia Dacosta with very few credits on IMBD. Wish was supposed to be commemorating Disney's 100-year anniversary, Disney should have gotten top talent to work on a project that significant but when it comes to wokeness the quality of your work is irrelevant.

The bolded is your opinion. Stop saying it as a fact! And it's BS that people like you won't allow "newish" writers and directors to get their shot in Hollywood. It's been extremely clear to most people that Allison Moore didn't do much on the project. I mean.......Disney didn't even mention her until a month or so before it was released LOL!

But the main writer of Wish was Jennifer Lee. YES!!! That Jennifer Lee that wrote the Frozen movie. That small movie that made over $1 Billion. So why not blame her instead? Or Disney's bad promotion and marketing?

pure denial LOL. You know those things are woke. Tell me the xplay rant that drove it into the ground wasn't woke. I dare you. And the trusting comes before the ip goes woke LMAO

What xplay rant?

 

[violence]

To fix woke people, you just need to teach them the scientific method.

 

[SkeletonQuays]

Love the "little mermaid" slide... hey insomniac... how'd that work out for Disney? They're fkn bleeding money from all this woke shit.

 

[Sinfulgore]

The bolded is your opinion. Stop saying it as a fact! And it's BS that people like you won't allow "newish" writers and directors to get their shot in Hollywood. It's been extremely clear to most people that Allison Moore didn't do much on the project. I mean.......Disney didn't even mention her until a month or so before it was released LOL!

But the main writer of Wish was Jennifer Lee. YES!!! That Jennifer Lee that wrote the Frozen movie. That small movie that made over $1 Billion. So why not blame her instead? Or Disney's bad promotion and marketing?

Obviously, all my comments are my opinions. I don't work at these companies so I can't know everything that goes on behind the scenes but I can give you my opinions based on the information available. Most studios don't talk about the writers on their content, especially if they aren't famous. I'm not sure where you are getting that from, I didn't say anything about newish writers or directors not getting a shot in Hollywood. Hollywood releases thousands of pieces of content a year there is plenty of work for everyone, and there is no need to hire some inexperienced indie director to make a big blockbuster. Disney is killing the careers of some of these people because flops like Eternals or The Marvels hurt these directors the most. Do you think any other studio will take a chance on Nia DaCosta now? Or Chloe Zhao?

You asked how Wish was woke and I answered that but I'm not saying Allison Moore is the sole reason Wish is a bad movie. Jennifer Lee also being a writer on Wish doesn't change anything. I don't judge a movie's quality based on sales, Frozen was a bad movie too.

I would argue all modern Disney movies are woke in some way because if the people at the company are woke they will incorporate woke ideas no matter what in ways most people won't notice because we, the audience, can't see how the stories are being made. Sometimes we do get a look behind the curtain though like with Wanda Vision, in an interview Kevin Feige admitted that Dr Strange was supposed to make an appearance but it was dropped because of wokeness. Marvel was afraid of backlash by having a white man show up at the end to show Wanda how to control her powers. This right here is the problem, creatives making changes not for the betterment of the story but to appease a tiny minority of people who will get offended by something like that. I am sure this kind of stuff is happening in almost every writer's room in Hollywood and gaming and this is leading to bad stories because all the content now is very generic, predictable, safe, and relies heavily on nostalgia.